200 Women is a book and exhibition founded on original interviews and accompanying photographic portraits. This landmark project is the realisation of an epic global journey to find two hundred women with diverse backgrounds, and to ask them what really matters to them.

200 Women is a book and exhibition inspired by a belief that you can’t empower women without listening to their stories. Our subsequent idea was to persuade two hundred women in different parts of the world - whether they be rich or poor, black or white, educated or uneducated, famous or unknown - to sit or stand in front of a plain sheet of fabric and to be photographed and filmed while answering five fundamental questions.

Our goal was not to make a book about just successful and powerful women; those stories are important, but we wanted diversity, and above all, authenticity. Two hundred 'real women', with 'real stories'.

Deanne Weir

Deanne Weir was born in Horsham in Victoria, Australia. A media entrepreneur, a television executive and a philanthropist, Weir spent eight years on the board of Screen Australia and was central to the development of its Gender Matters initiative. Weir is the chairperson of the Australian Women Donors Network and a member of the global philanthropic community Women Moving Millions. Weir is also co-founder of the WeirAnderson Foundation, a private ancillary fund that supports a number of cultural, educational, philanthropic and scientific organisations, and that has a particular emphasis on improving the lives of women and girls, and promoting gender equality.